Colorado Springs FFL Crackdown

Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:25:58 -0700
Organization: Cray Computer Corporation

Last year the BATF in Colorado Springs decided that they were going to check out all of the Federally licensed dealers of firearms in town. The media reported it as a no big deal inspection, it actually turned out to be a strong arm tactic from the BATF t o remove as many licenses as possible.

The only way I know about this is a friend of mine was the recipient of these tactics. He is a small time dealer that makes only enough profit to fund his personal collection as well as target and hunting costs. He has never been suspected of anything ill egal and has no criminal record of anykind.

He had been recording his sales for years and paying all necessary taxes on business to all agencies. He maintained the current laws on gun dealing and followed them. He had started a small business and was paying the necessary taxes to operate a small business.

They came to his house to to inspect his records looking more like commandos than government workers. On inspection of his records they found that a person who bought a pistol from him 6 months ago had mistakenly entered the current date instead of their birthdate. They told him they would charge him with selling a firearm to a minor since he had sold a pistol to a 6 month old child. He offered to have the person come over who had purchased the pistol to straighten out the paperwork. They said "fine", then they pulled their trump card.

"There's this little matter of a zoning violation. You have been operating a business from a residence not zoned for that". Forget that the city, state and county had accepted his small business tax money for years and not complained once.

Then they gave him **THE** option.

"You can fight us in court and risk 6 months in jail and $5,000 for every day you operated a business in a area not zoned for that, **OR** you can surrender your Federal Firearm License and we will forget the whole thing.

When an ordinary citizen with little financial resources is offered an option like that from the federal government it's not very hard to figure out which option he chose.

There was about 120 FFL licenses in our county before the BATF attack, today about 20 remain. I wonder how many other cities have been attacked like this?

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